2022 Threat Report

The BlackBerry 2022 Threat Report is not a simple retrospective of the cyberattacks of 2021. It is a high-level look at issues affecting cybersecurity across the globe, both directly and indirectly. It covers elements of critical infrastructure exploitation, adversarial artificial intelligence (AI), initial access brokers (IABs), critical event management (CEM), extended detection and response (XDR), and other issues shaping our current security environment.

This report covers topics confronting individuals and organizations around the world. As always, it represents our unique piece of the overall security puzzle. Our goal is to improve the global security posture by sharing our information, predictions, and experiences with everyone. To accomplish that, the report examines 2021’s major security events and how they may shape the cybersecurity landscape going forward. It provides a deep dive into the cybersecurity issues we face today, and offers readers additional information and context to perform their own thoughtful analysis.

That said, readers expecting our annual breakdown of the top 10 malware attacks witnessed by BlackBerry over the past year will not be disappointed. Nor will those who look forward to our incident response (IR) year in review, annual cybersecurity legislative updates, and near-term predictions. Many of the sections our readers have come to enjoy from previous BlackBerry threat reports have returned. In addition, this year, we tackle supply chain attacks, dangerous new programming languages, security in the Metaverse, quantum computing, ransomware campaigns, and other relevant emerging topics.

The fluidity of modern cyberattacks can require organizations to frequently rethink their approach to cybersecurity and consider new options. They must constantly assess new technologies and approaches that can outperform legacy antivirus (AV) solutions, ranging from prevention-first AI to adopting Zero Trust architecture. Accordingly, the BlackBerry 2022 Threat Report offers suggestions on cybersecurity strategies and technologies that could have prevented the greatest security lapses of the past year.

We sincerely hope the information contained in this report will help protect users and keep organizations secure in 2022 and beyond.